Consulting Mr Mill

G mentioned, and quoted a bit of, On Liberty yesterday. I’d been thinking of quoting it myself, and G sent me to the right bit to quote, so here is some more. From the last paragraph of Chapter 2.

Before quitting the subject of freedom of opinion, it is fit to take some notice of those who say, that the free expression of all opinions should be permitted, on condition that the manner be temperate, and do not pass the bounds of fair discussion. Much might be said on the impossibility of fixing where these supposed bounds are to be placed; for if the test be offence to those whose opinion is attacked, I think experience testifies that this offence is given whenever the attack is telling and powerful, and that every opponent who pushes them hard, and whom they find it difficult to answer, appears to them, if he shows any strong feeling on the subject, an intemperate opponent.

That’s just it, you see. Theists and fans of faith were always going to say that atheists were too noisy and ‘militant’ and dogmatic and whatever other stick came to hand. Of course they were. They weren’t going to like explicit atheism, and once the explicit atheism hit the best-seller lists, well – the result was what you might call overdetermined. Of course they would say atheists were too noisy! For the very reason that Mill suggests. Shouting that atheists are too noisy is a lot easier than arguing. So to conclude that therefore atheists really are too noisy and should be more quiet now so that…so that I’m not sure what, is to conclude too much.

With regard to what is commonly meant by intemperate discussion, namely invective, sarcasm, personality, and the like, the denunciation of these weapons would deserve more sympathy if it were ever proposed to interdict them equally to both sides; but it is only desired to restrain the employment of them against the prevailing opinion: against the unprevailing they may not only be used without general disapproval, but will be likely to obtain for him who uses them the praise of honest zeal and righteous indignation. Yet whatever mischief arises from their use, is greatest when they are employed against the comparatively defenceless; and whatever unfair advantage can be derived by any opinion from this mode of asserting it, accrues almost exclusively to received opinions.

Bingo.

In general, opinions contrary to those commonly received can only obtain a hearing by studied moderation of language, and the most cautious avoidance of unnecessary offence, from which they hardly ever deviate even in a slight degree without losing ground: while unmeasured vituperation employed on the side of the prevailing opinion, really does deter people from professing contrary opinions, and from listening to those who profess them. For the interest, therefore, of truth and justice, it is far more important to restrain this employment of vituperative language than the other; and, for example, if it were necessary to choose, there would be much more need to discourage offensive attacks on infidelity, than on religion.

Thank you and good evening.

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45 Responses to “Consulting Mr Mill”

Oh, well quoted, OB! Love the last bit. And that, of course, is why the pious brigade is marching around with drums and flags! That is, to deter people from expressing contrary opinions. Thank you and good night.

In general, opinions contrary to those commonly received can only obtain a hearing by studied moderation of language, and the most cautious avoidance of unnecessary offence, from which they hardly ever deviate even in a slight degree without losing ground.

Isn’t this actually saying that from a pragmatic point of view it is essential to ‘keep the volume down’ (a horrid and misleading phrase, btw, but it seems to have become rather a term of art) in order to make any headway? IOW, isn’t it reinforcing the argument for adopting a moderate tone?

OK, I’m not au fait with Mill and have only cursorily scanned this chapter now, so my interpretation may be off base – but isn’t his discussion of ‘restrain[ing] this employment of vituperative language’ referring to third-party restraint (ie censorship, whether editorial, governmental, or whatever) rather than the exercise of self-restraint?

I understand that last quoted section to mean that there is no utility in establishment censorship of intemperance on the part of ‘opinions contrary to those commonly received’ because any such intemperance will in itself undermine the user’s position (thus rendering said censorship unnecessary). In the context of the current subject (and accepting peo tem the debateable assumption that atheism should really be classed with ‘opinions contrary to those commonly received’) this seems to be saying that the religious should not call for Dawkins et al to be quieter because their very noisiness causes them to ‘lose ground’.

To quote another part: ‘[T]his weapon is, from the nature of the case, denied to those who attack a prevailing opinion: they can neither use it with safety to themselves, nor, if they could, would it do anything but recoil on their own cause.’ Again: it’s not a question of whether those who attack a prevailing opinion have no moral right to use ‘intemperate language’, it’s that it is counterproductive to do so. To me it sounds like Mill is firmly in the ‘turn down the volume’ camp… so this seems a very odd chapter to cite in opposition to that position.

outeast – No, no, it does not, and he is not. In that order. Mill argues that entrenched power will cry foul when criticism is effective, that it will do so with calls for bogus common standards of restraint that in the very calling for it is not demonstrating, and that “prevailing opinion” needs to moderate more than challenges to that opinion.

Mill (as I have just learned from a friend who is reading the new biography)was the creative force behind Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park (for those who don’t know, this is a spoty in London where speakers are allowed to declaim on any subject they wish for as long as they like), so it is pretty clear that he was on the side of outspoken free speech.

Mill is arguing for a general spirit of tolerance towards those with unpopular views and impolite ways of expressing them and give our culture’s fondness for cheering the “fiesty underdog” (sorry OB) it’s arguable that he suceeded, probably beyond his wildest expectations. But that’s not to account for American exceptionalism. Given that the voices arguing that outspoken athiesm is counter-productive are largely from the US it’s also arguable that American religiosity is sufficently powerful that sympathy for the underdog doesn’t extend to cases were the underdog is irreligious. But that’s just a fact of culture. If The God Delusion makes it harder to be an atheist in Alabama (or maybe easier to be a fundamentalist), that’s unfortunate but no reason for those of us not in that to shut up.

Not the most substantive of responses, chaps. I’m backing up my argument with verbatim quotes, you’re just playing ‘oh no he isn’t’ pantomime games. Where do you think my analysis of Mill’s phrasing is going wrong?

@Dirigible:

Mill argues that entrenched power will cry foul when criticism is effective

Actually his phrase is ‘experience testifies that this offence is given whenever the attack is telling and powerful’ – a general claim. And he certainly doesn’t make reference to ‘entrenched power’, but to entrenched opinion: ‘opinions commonly received’ (opinions are not ‘commonly received’ only among the powerful).

Actually, I’d say that many atheists (for whom atheism is an ‘opinion commonly received’) are doing precisely what Mill talks about: tolerating ‘invective, sarcasm, personality, and the like’ on the part of those challenging the idiocy of the faithful while seeing the intemperate language of the so-called ‘New Atheists’ as ‘honest zeal and righteous indignation’! That’s not to deny the obvious truth that those on The Other Side are not doing likewise, just calling a plague on both your houses.

(OK, now have I pissed enough people off?)

@Russell Blackford

Mill is arguing AGAINST telling people with unpopular views to turn down the volume.

Yes, he’s arguing against telling other people with unpopular views to turn down the volume. He’s arguing against all forms of censorship(‘law and authority have no business with restraining either’, etc.). He’s arguing against stifling dissent or disagreement.

But but but… he also says that if those who express ‘opinions contrary to those commonly received’ use ‘intemperate’ language they will ‘lose ground’ if they ever ‘deviate even in a slight degree’ from ‘studied moderation of language’! It’s there in black and white: as far as I can see, it’s not even ambiguous. (I interpret ‘lose ground’ as meaning approximately that they will lose credibility with their audience – perhaps you have a different interpretation?)

There are two issues: what ‘should be permitted’ and what is effective in communication.

‘Whatever unfair advantage can be derived by any opinion from this mode of asserting it, accrues almost exclusively to received opinions’… so if you want to challenge received opinion and actually reach your audience, you need to employ ‘studied moderation of language, and the most cautious avoidance of unnecessary offence.’ (Mill’s words: not mine.) It’s not fair, it’s not right, it’s not just – and he makes that case very clearly – but nonetheless it is ‘the nature of the case’.

Arguing that the so-called ‘New Atheists’ are adopting a counterproductive strategy in their apparent battle against religiosity (or religious bigotry, or irrational faith, whatever tag you like) is a matter of what is, not what ought. When I say it (and I guess when Julian says it… though not when Bunting does) it’s a pragmatic comment. It’s not saying ‘tone it down, it’s rude’ or ‘tone it down, it’s not fair’, or ‘tone it down, you have no right to be offensive’ – it’s saying ‘tone it down, it’s not working.’. (With perhaps a soupcon of ‘It’s getting boring.’)

“It’s there in black and white: as far as I can see, it’s not even ambiguous. “

I agree that it is there in black and white Outeast, but your sselctivity in quoting the bits of black and white is curious. You miss out this sentence:

“For the interest, therefore, of truth and justice, it is far more important to restrain this employment of vituperative language than the other; and, for example, if it were necessary to choose, there would be much more need to discourage offensive attacks on infidelity, than on religion.”

In other words, it is the vituperation of the the purveyors of received opinion that need toning down if anything, not the dissenters. =

Outeast, that’s a long way of saying nothing much. How does Julian know it’s not working? Because the Bunting says it’s foghorn loud? Or because McGrath says it’s silly? Or because Mark Vernon thinks there’s something woolly minded left to say? Or because Karen Armstrong tells us that all religion is about love and compassion? Come on! So far as I can tell, it is working. Guess why I think so? Because religious people are saying that its too loud and strident, King Abdullah wants all the monotheisms to gang up and save theism, and the pope says it over and over again: secularism is taking over Europe. I guess it depends on what effect you want to make, but that sounds like effectiveness to me.

However, there’s been more open discussion of atheism – Obama even mentioned unbelief in his innauguration address – since Harris, Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, Grayling, Onfay, etc. have published their books than at any time in my living memory, at least. It is working. That’s why the Bunting and her fine minds are all upset.

Mill is worried about what leads to truth, not so much about giving tips for communication.

He says it’s difficult for people with unpopular views to get a hearing unless they use very “nice” language. The more they deviate from niceness the less likely they are to get a fair hearing. I take it this is your point, outeast?

But this isn’t NEWS to anyone, is it? Mill seems to think it self-evident. Unless you already have a fan base and a reputation, you are unlikely to be able to get unpopular views published in a robust form. Fortunately, Dawkins, etc., were able to get a hearing by having built up reputations in advance.

Therefore, Mill says, there’s no need to tell the people with unpopular views to tone things down. The people who should be told, if anyone should be, are those with POPULAR views, who are under less pressure to be nice.

I don’t see Mill denying that sarcasm, etc., such language can be rhetorically effective, just that people with unpopular views will be under continual pressure not to use it. (If someone really doesn’t know this and you want to help them, you could tell them PRIVATELY how to get a hearing by appearing nicer, but that is not the same as publicly exaggerating how mean they are. But this issue isn’t really what Mill is talking about.)

Also, less “nice” language will be less intimidating coming from people with unpopular views than if it came from people with public opinion on their side.

Mill doesn’t explictly say, but it follows logically, that if you publicly exaggerate how sarcastic, etc., your allies are, you are going to make it even harder for them to get a hearing. He is not saying that we should jump in and exaggerate how nasty, sarcastic, etc., Dawkins, etc., are, so as to make it even LESS likely that they’ll be heard. That is not his point at all.

But he’s really not handing out advice on rhetoric. He thinks that, in the interests of truth, etc., we shouldnt’ be telling people they have to be nice, and if we were to tell anyone to be nice it should be the people with POPULAR views.

“He says it’s difficult for people with unpopular views to get a hearing unless they use very “nice” language. The more they deviate from niceness the less likely they are to get a fair hearing.”

He says something stronger than that. He says that they are forced to ‘play nice’ to enter the debate at all, but that their opponents are able to use the full force of their invective to shout them down, so they are in a viscious circle, unqable to get heard one way of the other. Hitchens and company have bucked th4 trend by writing books that are popular and which bypass the usual gatekeepers of opinion and go directly to the masses. This, it seems to me, is what has so infuriated Bunting and freinds.

It really is daft all this talk of ‘foghorning’ atheists. You might just as well accuse JK Rowling of ‘foghorning’ her stories about elves and such. It takes a real effort to go out and buy and then to read one of the few available books on atheism. Why not just not bother if the tone is so offensive? I imagine Madeleine Bunting going hoome every evening and putting on her newly acquired Metallica album at top volume so that she can complain for the duration about how offensively noisy it is.

And the idea that committed Christians would be more likely top change their views about religion if Hitchens was more conciliatory and wheedling in his discussion of the evils of religion is just silly.

John Meredith: I didn’t quote that because it pertains to a different point. (It also strikes me as necessarily rhetorical, since if taken at face value it would seem to be urging exactly the kind of censorship that he’s otherwise condemning.)

Eric MacDonald: My comment was primarily about what Mill wrote; only peripherally was it about the implication for what Julian wrote in his column. And I only spilled so much virtual ink on it because I received such insubstantial yet dismissive responses to what seems to me to be a rather glaring problem with citing this test in support of the pro-’New Atheist’ case. (Oh, and because I’m in an open-plan office and need to look busy all the time…)

I do agree there’s no meaningful evidence on the effectiveness or otherwise of the ‘New Atheists’. Julian appeared to be citing the media prominence of the likes of Bunting as evidence that the atheists are failing to occupy the middle ground do so, but that’s tricky evidence at best. Your own ‘evidence’ is equally weak, though – the Pope’s been spouting nonsense about European secularism since before the God Delusion was published, for example, and Obama long since wrote about his father’s atheism. On this issues, gut feelings rule the day – and your gut evidently tells you the reverse of mine…

“John Meredith: I didn’t quote that because it pertains to a different point. “

No it doesn’t, it makes clear that in the extract Mill is not advocating a ‘softly softly’ approach from dissenting voices, which was precisely the point under discussion. If anything, he is suggesting that the guardians of received opinion should moderate their tone, rather than the criticisers of religion. If anything.

“I do agree there’s no meaningful evidence on the effectiveness or otherwise of the ‘New Atheists’.”

There is some evidence: the books have proved hugely popular and we can only assume that a large proportion of the people reading them find the ideas of interest and the presentation compelling. It seems unlikely that they would be such bestsellers if many readers found them risible or rebabrbative or if they were only being read as a comfort blanket by already committed atheists. Of course, dogmatic religionists will not be reached, but they cannot, on principle, be reached by reason.

I see where the differences in opinion/interpretation lie now, I guess. I just don’t think that the ‘New Atheists’ have in any way bypassed the watershed past which they can use intemperate language without eroding their credibility…

For one thing, I don’t think ‘Hitchens and company have bucked the trend by writing books that are popular and which bypass the usual gatekeepers of opinion and go directly to the masses’ [JM]; I think they’re just standing in a global Speaker’s Corner – reaching a big audience, but not on the whole a new one. They’re having fun, and it’s a great spectator sport seeing them tear fundies new arseholes, but essentially I think they’re pitching to a demographic that’s good and sold already.

I’m European, and I’ve never had to live in the States – and I guess my view on where the real battle lies is coloured by that. I’m not surrounded by orthodox religion… instead it’s the wishy-washy that is taking over: I want atheists to reach those who are turning away from ‘God’, but the indications here are that more people are shifting to some kind of spiritualism than to atheism.

In other words, old-school religion is losing its belief base but it’s overwhelmingly the woolly-minded bunch, not the rationals, who are picking up the disillusioned.

outeast, if the responses were dismissive I’m afraid that’s because you simply misread what Mill is saying. It would doubtless be clearer if you read the whole last paragraph (it’s very long) instead of just my extracts. He’s describing what minority opinion is forced to do and then going on to say that it is majority opinion that really has the power to silence.

“I just don’t think that the ‘New Atheists’ have in any way bypassed the watershed past which they can use intemperate language without eroding their credibility”

So what?

If there even is such a thing, and if you even know where it might be, and if anyone might know that – even then, so what?

The ‘new’ atheists aren’t running for anything. They’re not marketing anything. They’re not attempting to repair anyone’s reputation in the aftermath of the latest bribery scandal. Why are people always giving them unsolicited advice on how to do a better job of things they don’t want to do?

Who cares if they are (according to you, on the basis of who know what) ‘eroding their credibility’? God what a rebarbative phrase. They’re not on a mission to beef up their ‘credibility’ – they’re trying to get at the truth of the matter and to encourage other people to do the same. Anxious attention to their ‘credibility’ (‘do my opinions look too fat in this?’) would be a stupid way to go about that.

Also, notice (yet again) how you are (like all these others) just recycling the stupid meme yet again – notice how you pass on the weary and wearying canard that the ‘new’ atheists ‘use intemperate language.’

I did read the whole paragraph (actually most of the chapter) and understood him to be saying several things. Yes, one of those things was that ‘it is majority opinion that really has the power to silence’, but (as I’ve said) he also says that it is an unfortunate reality of communication that anyone challenging received opinion needs to adopt a moderate tone or lose ground.

You can say ‘so what?’ (as you just did), but if the aim of the ‘new atheists’ is genuinely to communicate their ideas then anything which undermines that goal is counterproductive (and it’s Mills’ argument that it does – regardless of whether or not I agree with that).

As to the ‘rebarbative’ phrase of ‘eroding credibility’, I was trying to find another way of rephrasing Mill’s own expression ‘losing ground’. It wasn’t meant to be dismissive or patronizing or anything – isn’t it patently obvious that people don’t listen to authorities they don’t find credible?

Sorry, OB: you introduced Mill, citing the given section as being pertinent to the discussion – and it was his phrase. I was trying to use his language so as not to misrepresent either him or you (as the person who introduced the text).

outeast, but you’re still misreading the way he says it. You’re still reading in an ‘ought’ that isn’t there. He isn’t saying ‘opinions contrary to those commonly received’ must resort to moderation of language, he’s saying they’re forced to and that that’s not a good thing.

I probably won’t be able to convince you of this, because it’s a bit subtle and perhaps rests on a little more familiarity with Mill (you said you weren’t au fait) – but it’s true all the same: you’re just misreading his point.

You misread Julian’s whole article in your comments on ‘The atheists had it coming,’ too. I don’t know what to tell you…

“if the aim of the ‘new atheists’ is genuinely to communicate their ideas then anything which undermines that goal is counterproductive”

Well obviously – that’s true by definition. But it’s not possible to figure out such things with such certainty that any particular course is self-evidently the only right one. One does think about tone and audience when writing, of course – but one also knows that one doesn’t know, that different people react in different ways, that people are unpredictable, that there is no science of How To Piss Off No One At All Anywhere, that too much anxiety to Offend No One gets you nothing but bland lifeless empty cream of wheat, in which case why write at all?

It’s just a claim that ‘noisy’ atheists are losing or will lose or might someday lose credibility. I can just claim right back that explicit atheists are just what a lot of people want right now – and there are those best-seller lists after all. So the case for being timid and placatory and emollient is not particularly iron-clad, even if one does want to take a calculating approach.

Really, outeast. Let’s look at what Mill does say. Here’s an important part of that last paragraph:

Much might be said on the impossibility of fixing where these supposed bounds [of temperance of expression] are to be placed; for if the test be offence to those whose opinion is attacked, I think experience testifies that this offence is given whenever the attack is telling and powerful, and that every opponent who pushes them hard, and whom they find it difficult to answer, appears to them, if he shows any strong feeling on the subject, an intemperate opponent.

Take note of the bolded last part. I think it is arguable that the attack of the ‘new atheists’ has been ‘telling and powerful’, and many religious people have taken offence. Some have hidden in woolly-mindedness. ‘Nothing the new atheists say applies to any god that I believe in,’ and all the finest religious minds agree. But still they are offended, because woolly-mindedness, whether the wooly-minded acknowledge it or not, they need the straightforward ‘these are the facts’ type of belief to gain any market share for their woolly minded reading of belief. For if everyone suddenly became woolly-minded, they’d no longer know what they were being woolly-minded about.

So I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Gene-expression stats turn out to be true, but I’m not sure what it would prove about the rhetoric of the new atheists, nor why we should be telling them how to do what they have chosen to do. Whose business is it anyway? That’s the part that I can’t understand about Julian Baggini. Why does he want people to turn down the volume? No one’s telling him to raise it.

You know, you remind me very much of a theologian reading biblical texts. Mill is very carefully laying on the situation in society when an unpopular minority view is being expressed, and how the difference between minority and majority views is of crucial importance to questions of liberty. He does warn against unnecessary causing of offence, but he also tells us that, for an upopular view, strongly and well expressed, there is hardly any way that it will not cause offence to those who find it challenging. I think this is precisely what is happening to the ‘new’ atheist discourse.

Ok, I’m quite willing to believe that I’m overinterpreting this short bit of Mill in a way that I would not if I knew him better. I see a number of different logical statements in that single paragraph -statements that look independent of one another – but I’m not used to reading this stuff and maybe should not be trying to separate out the arguments in this way. Ditto on the ought. I’ll try to look into it further…

I’ll shut up now. I don’t want to be a waste of time, which I guess is all I’m achieving…

Eric: “He does warn against unnecessary causing of offence, but he also tells us that, for an upopular view, strongly and well expressed, there is hardly any way that it will not cause offence to those who find it challenging.”

He doesn’t just warn against unnecessary offense, he explicitly says not to do it if you want to be effective.

Mill: “opinions contrary to those commonly received can only obtain a hearing by studied moderation of language, and the most cautious avoidance of *unnecessary* offence” (my emphasis)

He is saying, quite clearly, imho, that offense will be taken *anyway*, so do your best not to give any that you don’t have to. It’ll give you your best chance of persuading the majority of your position.

That’s his advice to the minority opinions. But he goes further, and tells the holders of the majority opinion to quit being such wankers about it all.

Mill: “unmeasured vituperation employed on the side of the prevailing opinion, really does deter people from professing contrary opinions, and from listening to those who profess them. For the interest, therefore, of truth and justice, it is far more important to restrain this employment of vituperative language than the other”

(Okay, he puts it better, but it’s just a wordier way of saying the same thing.)

So, we’ve got a couple of points.

Mill observes that the dissenting minority will always have a hard time against the prevailing majority, and that it’s not a level playing-field.

He tells the minority to suck it up and deal with, ‘cos that’s just the way things are if you want to get anywhere.

He tells the majority to get a life and listen to other opinions, fer-crying-out-loud.

Note: *none of this necessarily makes Julian right*. You could agree with my interpretation of Mill and still disagree with Julian (I know *I* do).

Owen, no, that’s not what he’s saying. Have you read the whole paragraph?

Above all, he is not telling the minority to suck it up and deal with it. That’s pretty much the opposite of what he’s saying.

He doesn’t approve of vituperative language – so he’s not telling the minority by all means to use it – but he’s not giving ‘framing’ advice to avoid it in order to be effective, either. He’s pointing out expectations, and an asymmetry in the way they’re applied; he disapproves of the asymmetry.

He argues throughout OL against the tyranny of conventional opinion, and the subtle and therefore difficult to resist pressure of opinion on the freedom of thought. He’s not telling minority opinion-holders to tiptoe.

I believe so. I’ll go through it again though. Ah, wait. Going back in the thread a bit:

OB (to outeast): “You’re still reading in an ‘ought’ that isn’t there. He isn’t saying ‘opinions contrary to those commonly received’ must resort to moderation of language, he’s saying they’re forced to and that that’s not a good thing.”

I think I might be making that mistake.

Gah.

Would I now be right in saying he’s not really giving the minority opinion any advice at all? He’s only talking to the majority? He’s still telling them not to be wankers, right?

Here is a rewrite of the paragraph in question. I still don’t understand where outeast and Owen are coming from:

Mill asks if we should have rules (social or legal) against unfair discussion. One problem is that people often take offense to a passionate defense of an opinion simply because it makes a good point which is hard to answer. Another problem is that people are often unfair and unreasonable without meaning to be, which makes it impossible to hold anyone responsible, which makes these rules nearly impossible to enforce.

But what about rules against open disrespect? Mill might be okay with such rules if they were applied equally to both sides. But in practice they are applied unequally, in order to prop up majority opinion and put down minority opinion. And this unequal privileging of the majority opinion is far more dangerous than unequal privileging of the minority opinion would be. For minorities are at a disadvantage, deprived of the very powerful tactic of accusing the other side of immorality: majorities can benefit from the tactic because minorities are already disliked, whereas minorities cannot use the tactic lest they become even more disliked.

In general, minorities are naturally forced to be polite, whereas the rudeness of the majority often prevents free and open discussion. Therefore, if we care about open discussion and the truth, rules against majority rudeness are far more important than rules against minority rudeness: e.g., enforcing politeness in believers is far more important than enforcing politeness in nonbelievers.

In conclusion, while legal rules are clearly inappropriate, Mill thinks our social rules should vary with situation, evaluating speakers by their individual conduct instead of by which side they take.

Nicely done, Dave2! I would further add that a little context helps. Remember that On Liberty was published in 1859 – smack dab in the middle of 19th century Victorian England’s love affair with propriety and keeping up appearances – which above all meant not being seen as bucking prevailing social opinion in any way, and cruelly punishing anyone who violated that social order. Mill’s entire argument about freedoms in On Liberty – not just his argument about free speech – was aimed much more at the overarching oppressive power of rigid, authoritarian social mores than at any strictly political oppression (although of course he opposed that as well).

Would anyone be willing to look at something I’ve written ‘showing my workings’ on this issue? I accept that I must be getting it wrong (you guys know this stuff much better that I do, I haven’t even read the Cliff Notes), yet I really can’t see where the real mistake is coming in. I’d really like to see where I’m getting it so very badly wrong… but I don’t want to clog up the forum with more misconceptions.

To my shame I read all of Mill’s Liberty for the first time last year, though I’d known him from extracts and quotations. I was taken with the style as well as the substance – that calm, equable, reasonable tone.

What he says about a prevailing view of “honest zeal and righteous indignation” against a minority view, however mildly expressed, struck a chord.

For instance, holocaust denial makes me spit tacks and froth at the lips. When I meet a holocaust denier or soft-peddler I want to hit them.

Holocaust denial is a minority opinion. It is normally expressed in a nasty, vituperative, jeering tone – “holohoax” etc. However I do remember when a bunch of holocaust deniers came here and in highly reasonable tones and literate sentences were asking for evidence and so on. Their tone made me even angrier than the dumb thuggish illiteracy that is the usual style of such pronouncements.

From this I conclude that the likes of Bunting would be happier if “new” atheism was crude god & Christian bashing than reasoned arguments from intellectuals with a high degree of intelligence, and who are also good writers.

“when a bunch of holocaust deniers came here and in highly reasonable tones and literate sentences were asking for evidence and so on.”

Yeah but then the next step was that I kept pointing them to evidence and they kept saying ‘oh that’s just a link, you can’t expect us to click on a link, we want actualy physical evidence right here online where we can touch it! And hurry up about it! You fraud you!’